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Saturday, April 2, 2016

Day in the Life Photo Montage

Last Tuesday, I participated in A Day in the Life which is a project guided/sponsored by Ali Edwards. While Tuesday was just an ordinary day for me, I enjoyed the process of taking lots of photos I ordinarily would not have bothered with and thought some of you might like to see them here. At some point, I plan to do a mini-album focused on ADITL, but I'm not in a terrible hurry or anything.

I am not a morning person - alarm at 7:00, and it's still painful.

I stumble to the shower and scald myself until the hot water runs out.

After my shower, I peek outside to see what the weather is like. I get dressed in my bedroom, brush my teeth in the master bathroom, then head to the main bathroom to fix my hair.

I rarely have time to make my bed in the mornings.

Once I get dressed, I go to the kitchen and plug my phone in until it's time to leave for school. My alarms are set at 7:00, 7:15, 7:30, and 8:00 to keep me on track as I get ready.

Each morning, I sit in my rocking chair in the living room and put on my makeup. I like the natural light by the windows there.

Each morning, I watch Good Morning America as I get ready for the day.

Dressed + makeup applied + hair fixed

Charlie-dog waits patiently at my feet while I primp for the day.

Once I'm ready, I prepare wet food for the dogs and give them their medicine. Lowder-dog is taking several pills and an antibiotic right now.

I separate them and feed them. While I'm waiting for them to finish, I make a cup of ice and pack whatever I'm taking to school for breakfast and lunch.

This is when I SHOULD leave for school, but it rarely happens.

After they eat, the dogs generally go on a morning constitutional in the backyard. Here, Charlie-dog is doing his part by peeing on the wheel of the cart holding part of my backyard stick collection.

After telling the dogs goodbye, I exit through the garage.

There's the actual time I left for school today. It's a good thing I live so close to work.

Goodbye house and pups until later this evening...

I take the same route to work every day basically. Here's the one stoplight I encounter between home and school. (There are 2 stop signs too. Haha)

And here's the view from my parking space.

Oops, this pic is out of order - I posed for a selfie while I waited for the dogs to eat their breakfast.

Here's my quiet classroom before the day begins. I made it to school with 12 minutes to spare before students came to class.

In first period, we had a fantastic discussion about how different people deal with grief and loss in preparation for reading "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." I didn't take any pics of that.

In second period, my sophomores are watching Julius Caesar (the Marlon Brando one from the 1950s). Here's the view of it from my desk.

I didn't take any pictures of 3rd or 4th period today because we were too busy - 3rd was finishing a lecture series video about "Elegy..." and 4th was watching the JC video.

At 12:30, I left school during my lunch period and met the fella at Penn Station Sandwich shop. I ordered my usual - a artichoke with mushroom sandwich and 1/2 fry that I split with him. We enjoyed a sort of leisurely lunch. It was nice to be able to just chat without distraction.

Selfie in the car on the way back to school from lunch...

During my planning period, I usually end up with a couple of kids who need some place to hang out or need someone to talk to; sometimes all they do is play on their phones or take a nap, but they choose to do that in my classroom during my free period. During my free period today, I made a change to my AT&T account that took forever on the phone and I completed a phone interview with a college student. I didn't get much actual paperwork done during my planning period unfortunately.

I didn't take a photo during 6th period, but my students were working on the same thing that 3rd period had done.

After regular class, ESS was next up on my agenda.

Basically, I administer make-up tests and monitor student behavior as they work on projects or assignments for their English classes. Today, I had a pretty big bunch - about 20 students stayed for ESS which lasts an hour on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the English computer lab.

After ESS, I had 40 minutes to kill as I waited for my adult night class began. I shot this selfie during that time. I also played around on Facebook and ordered a birthday gift for the fella.

At 5:00, my adult night class began. Only four students showed up tonight, so I wasn't particularly busy.

Those two hours can be incredibly boring, so I multi-task while I'm there. Tonight, I mainly worked on updating my Midori and on tweaking the packing list I'm planning for my trip to Europe this summer. At other times, I graded student work and answered questions. Mostly, I was just glued to my computer screen on one task or another.

I checked my fitbit status during night class, and it was awfully poor for the day. I didn't walk much at all at work today! Usually, I've had at least this many steps by midday. Maybe I could blame it on the fact that I could still barely walk from my landscaping escapade this weekend. Maybe I could blame it on not enough sleep - 7 hours each night is my goal. Maybe I've just been uber lazy today. Hanging head in shame...

I was able to leave a few minutes early - at 6:46 pm tonight. The hallway was deserted.

Here's a look at my classroom door as I passed it. My night class takes place in the English computer lab next door to my classroom.

I love the time change! When I leave night class, it's still daylight outside. Notice that my car is the only one in the parking lot.

This has been my parking spot for 22 years. That's crazy, huh?

Before getting in my car, I turned around and took this photo of my school in the fading sunlight. I'm not sure I've ever taken a pic of this part of it before now.

Here's what it looks like as I leave school in the evening.

And here's my same drive home that I take every single day.

You can see how quickly the light begins to fade about 7:00 pm this time of year. The time lapse between the pic above and the one below is only about 3 minutes max.

As I turn right onto Nashville road in the evening, you can see Western Kentucky University on the hill in the distance. I love the way the light shines on it this time of day.

When I get home, I usually take the dogs with me out front to get the mail. They kind of see it as an adventure, I think. Here, you can see Lowder-dog strutting his stuff near the driveway.

Both Lowder-dog and Charlie-dog found something very interesting in the landscaping on the other side of the driveway.

My grill died, so it and a large stack of limbs are awaiting pickup by the trash people in the morning. Charlie-dog did his part by peeing on everything that was waiting pickup. I know that stack of limbs might not look like much, but all of that came just from my front yard. I have probably quadruple that amount that need to be picked up out back. Since my grill died, that's now on my list of things to buy next week when I'm off for spring break. The most difficult part will be getting it home; Bugs are not the best vehicle for transporting larger goods.

I remembered to take my recycling to the curb when I got home tonight. Charlie-dog supervised this process,then went on a bit of a neighborhood walkabout.

On our way back inside, I snapped a pic of my hostas, daylilies, and liriope that are progressing nicely.

I had to call for Charlie-dog quite a bit, but he eventually listened to me and headed home.

I love that I caught this photo of him mid-trot with none of his feet on the ground. Haha!

Fave part of my day each day? Taking off my bra and shoes, but changing out of my school clothes entirely - it's magical, I tell you. I immediately stripped down into my pjs (not matching, of course,) and thought I might snap a pic of my bracelet and my fitbit as I did so.

I decided to whip up a simple dinner since it was late, and I was tired. Avocado toast sounded good, so I made the 'sauce' first in order to let it marinate.

Then I toasted the bread - sourdough this time.

Finally, I assembled the toasts.

It was delish, and I enjoyed every bite. I'll post the recipe for this sometime in the next few days; I already have it scheduled and everything. Since I'm so classy, I ate on a paper plate. Why on earth would I dirty up any more dishes, right?

After dinner, I lounged around on the couch and worked on my Midori list for today. Lowder-dog kept my lap warm while I did that. I also watched The Voice and played around online for a couple of hours. Between reading TripAdvisor and Facebook and checking Instagram and email and playing Words With Friends, it's easy to let screen time suck up a few hours in the evening. I thought about getting crafty, but I was just too cold and too tired to bother.

I spent a bit of time chatting on facebook with one of my childhood friends about her daughter's upcoming trip to Europe this week. That was really fun since she and I don't talk that often.

A little after 9:00, I made myself get up off the couch to do a load of laundry and to clean up the kitchen. I didn't feel like it, but I knew I'd appreciate having done it when I woke up on Wednesday morning. Lowder-dog and Charlie-dog did not feel the need to assist me.

Dirty dishes crammed into the dishwasher - ick, I don't like that part of this chore.

And dishes that I washed by hand stacked to the left of the sink - as you can see, I don't do dishes very often. In fact, I try to wait until my sink is full which can take a few days. This time, I had lots of dishes to do because I couldn't fit everything in the dishwasher when I had the kids and the fella over for Easter dinner Sunday night. It does make me happy when the kitchen is nice and clean though.

I promise I didn't slip them any tranquilizers; the dogs were just really tired at this point. They like to go to bed around 9 pm, but I almost never actually lay down that early. You can see the difference in the photos where I did or didn't use my flash. I haven't altered any of these photos yet; you're seeing them in their unedited state.

Doesn't Charlie-dog look especially sweet here?

And, of course the regal Lowder-dog never fails to impress!

The dogs watched me from their comfy spots on the couch, waiting for me to tell them it was time for bed.

Lowder-dog was mid-yawn here, but at least Charlie-dog was looking my way.

Finally, I called it a night and took them to bed where I proceeded to play on Pinterest and watch a streamed episode of The Americans. G'night everybody!

By the numbers:

Total number of pictures taken - 97

Total number of screenshots - 2

Total number of hours at work - 11

Total number of fun things I did - 1

Total number of people in my pics - 2 (the fella and me)

There you have it - my very average day in the life. I didn't really see many people. I didn't really do much of anything exciting. It was just an ordinary Tuesday, but I'm certainly glad that I documented it. There will be some time in the future when an ordinary Tuesday will look much different for me; then, it'll be nice to look back and remember these days.

9 comments:

I was listening to old episode of Scrap Gals tonight while I finished up a layout (from 2014) and you mentioned your blog. So I thought I would check & see if you were still blogging. !!! YAY!I don't do ADITL because my kids are grown and my life is boring. At least that's what I thought before I saw your pictures. I am inspired!!!

I was listening to old episode of Scrap Gals tonight while I finished up a layout (from 2014) and you mentioned your blog. So I thought I would check & see if you were still blogging. !!! YAY!I don't do ADITL because my kids are grown and my life is boring. At least that's what I thought before I saw your pictures. I am inspired!!!